I have witnessed many cases of court ordered assessments of children by means of a 730 evaluation by a court appointed clinical psychologist.
There are cases, too, where an MMPI-2 personality test is brought in as proof that a father, or mother, is a fitting person to have un-monitored association with a child, their own, even.
Nowhere do I see any kind of test being brought in as proof that a man or a woman is a fit person to judge people. Judging is not just about the what of man-made law, it is perhaps even more about the why of God-given human behavior.
The current list of legal qualifications for those aspirers should be augmented, and the California Constitution should be amended by the legislature to take care of this omission. California Constitution-Judicial. Examine especially Articles 6 and 13.
Judges are, for all of us, the common Gods upon which all of the world’s societies rely. They have the penultimate meaningful word to order our fate, prior to the ultimate word, which is unknown at this time: what happens after death? And yet their own mental health is ignored. It is way overdue to put that right.
I here propose that all people who aspire to, and apply for, a judgeship first produce the results of a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) test, and an interpretation and report from a clinical psychologist licensed by the High Court. These documents are not unduly expensive to come by, perhaps no more than $5,000. They should be mandatory before any judge is unleashed to preside in Family or Probate court.
If this were to happen, we the People, would have been spared the judger who had sex with a defendant, the judger who masturbated while on the bench, the judger who kept pornographic child images on his computers (yes, as those who keep up with such things know, these things all actually happened), and the judger who makes rulings that seem to fit in with personal controversial past life views and happenings.
However, because there are thousands of situations where lawyers act pro tem as judges, there should be a Commission of Inquiry set up by the governor first, to determine the mechanics. I would be happy to testify. After all, why wouldn’t a “straight-shooter” of a judge not want to satisfy those who come before the bench seeking his (or her) transparency? This would be a happily worn “badge of office”.
Let this question be put on the ballot for us to decide at the next election.